NowJapan: Japanese cultural festival growing year by year

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2015 October 13

The Baltics-largest Japanese cultural festival “NowJapan”took place on this September 26-27th . The venue, LITEXPO in Vilnius, was full of Lithuanian youth with his own costume of cosplay.

Japanese culture which “NowJapan” introduced to visitors are from the area of pop culture, for instance, Anime, Manga and Cosplay to the area of Japanese traditional culture like Japanese cuisine, Ikebana, calligraphy and Bonsai.

This year marked 7 years anniversary. This event was started as just a cosplay event in 2008. At that time, the number of participants are only 150 persons. However, this event has been expanded year by year steadily. A variety of Japanese artists are invited every year. Its number and variety has increased as well. “NowJapan” is no doubt the event which gives a lot of aspects of Japanese culture to the audience from Baltic countries.

Who is the best cosplayer? Characters from all over the world.

In two days, a lot of events were organized. For instance, there was a cosplay competition, various presentations related to Japan, experience of Japanese culture, music live by Japanese artists and, furthermore, showing some documentary films about Chiune Sugihara.

In the art corner, named “Harajuku”, there was flea market about products regarding Japan. You could see the Lithuanian youth treasuring Manga or Anime goods. Besides that, Origami or Calligraphy was explained as Japanese traditional one.

On the other place, entertainment corner named “Akihabara”, you could enjoy playing some games. There was opportunity to play “Go”, Japanese tactical board game pursuing more territory than opponent has, board games from other countries or video games. Small humanoid robot appeared and, attracted a lot of people.

Below is the slide show created by BalticAsia for the purpose of introducing how this year’s “NowJapan” is like.

After he entered Waseda University in 2012, he became a member of "Chiune Bridging Project" which is a society doing a variety of activities for the purpose of making Chiune Sugihara's credit more well-known. Regarding that, he studied about Chiune Sugihara and the Holocaust,visited the places related to them and did an internship at Sugihara House in Kaunas. Since 2012, he has visited Lithuania 4 times. From September 2015, he studies at the Faculty of Communication in Vilnius University. What attracts him is the atmosphere of Lithuania.